


Ill Omens

by PositivelyVexed



Category: The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 18:43:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15467628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: Scenes from Charlie and Eli's early days with the Commodore.





	Ill Omens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



“Is he a real Commodore?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“I suppose not.” I urged my horse into a trot behind my brother, trying to stay close.  “Only, I prefer to know if a man goes by a title he has not earned.”

I do not believe I had actually had an opinion on the matter before I voiced it. But the way Charlie emphasized the title when he spoke it, like it was weighed down with gold, had begun to grate on me. And I resented how I had been asked to wait in the hall while Charlie and the Commodore established the terms of our employment.

“Well then, perhaps I should ask him, to set your mind at ease.”

I knew he was about to amuse himself at my expense. He turned in his saddle, and adopted a high-toned voice. “Commodore, my brother demands proof of your naval rank. He has sworn he will not accept employment from anything less than a officer in good standing with the United States Navy.”

“Amusing. Still, you understand my point, even if you pretend not to.”

“In fact, commodore may not match his ambitions. Are there any admirals doing business in Oregon Country?”

“But the facts remain. We do not know the man.”

He pulled up on the reins, and his horse fell back until it was neck and neck with mine.

“You know me, Eli,” he said. “Do you have faith in my judgement?”

I knew even in those early days, that it wasn’t faith I had in him, but something more primal, the pull of blood towards its own kind. I was starting to chafe under its pull, but I was also resigned to it. He had begun to notice I did not agree so readily with him as I once did, and I think it bothered him.

I would only bend so far as to say, “I hope you are right.”

He looked at me, as if wondering what had become of the starry-eyed brother who used to follow so agreeably at his heels.

“I am. He is a great man, and great men do not hand out such opportunities often.” _Especially not to men like us_  was unspoken, but understood.

And what I was arguing for, in the end? I had no better ideas. It was good money, and it was work that would keep us together.

We rode on in silence, our horses climbing the rocky path. I studied my brother’s back, the way he rode, loose and at ease in the saddle, and attempted, as I so often did, to emulate it, but there is something in his grace that always eluded me. Occasionally we would come across a break in the trees and the whole of the gorge would be laid out below us, hills and cliffsides tumbling down to the river, majestic and terrible. It put me in mind of some song I had some partiality to, about soldiers who died far away at war, never to look upon the rolling hills of home again. At first Charlie squared his shoulders into the wind and ignored me, and I sang only for my own amusement. But as I started the second verse he began to whistle—he is an admirable whistler—and the two of us harmonized, our mingled efforts carrying the tune high above the trees.

 

\---

 

The first of our stops concerned a red-faced little man named Stokes, an accountant with a pinewood office along The Dalles’s muddy main street. He looked up impatiently as we entered, showing that whatever the state of his own office, he thought it above serving clientele like us.

“Hello, Stokes,” my brother said amiably. “My name is Charlie Sisters, and this is my brother, Eli. We’re here on the Commodore’s business.”

It amused me to see his red face drain of all color, like someone had pulled the stopper out of a tub. He made a vague and irrelevant gesture with his hands before reaching for an account book beneath his desk. He filled out and signed some manner of paper and handed it over, the contents of which I could not see, but which seemed to satisfy Charlie.

The next two stops went much the same. Afterwards, we both looked at each other and laughed, unable to believe how easily money could come into a man’s possession on the weight of a name alone. The night before we were to return to Oregon City, Charlie found us a saloon and got drunk. There were other men there, and I half-expected him to pick a fight with them, but he did not. Instead, he spoke to the pretty girl standing in garish clothes in the corner looking bored, and she laughed too enthusiastically at his jokes, and I knew that he had his company for the evening. I turned in soon after, trying not to cast bitter eyes in the direction of my brother’s door.

We shared a thin wall, which soon became evident when they retired to Charlie’s room. I disliked being able to overhear a couple in the act, since it always affected me; it somehow always affected me worse when I knew it was Charlie. My face heated preemptively as I heard him speak sharply—a teasing sort of command. After a minute, the joints of the bed began to creak and the girl moaned and fell to a rhythmic gasping that sent heat rushing to my center. I took up a pillow and covered my ears with it, but the picture of Charlie and his girl had fixed themselves in my mind. I sometimes wondered if he did this to vex me; it was not the first time I’d been in such a situation. But that was an absurd thought, and I knew there was nothing to do but wait it out, and put my hand under the covers to relieve my own needs. The rhythmic creaking next door increased in speed and intensity, and, annoyed that I was not free from my brother’s influence even here, I worked my organ mechanically and finished quickly. Then I forced myself to close my eyes and fall asleep.

I had been sleeping quite heavily sometime before dawn when my brother roused me and pointed toward the window. “Get up. Quietly. We are leaving this way.”

There was no explanation needed, but all the same, a few miles later, as I yawned into the air, still bleary from the sleep I’d lost, my brother offered one.

“I found her services lacking.”

“You did not pay her.”

He shrugged, and said nothing. Maybe it was the coldness of the early morning, or the splinter I had acquired in my palm while pulling myself through the window, or the memories of the noise they had made last night, but I was not in a mood for it.

“You always find their services lacking. If you are so dissatisfied, I don’t see why you continue to go to them.”

“My younger brother, the expert on satisfaction in this matter.”

“I did not say that,” I said, irritated and embarrassed that I’d been drawn into talking like this, when I was the one who’d been pulled from my bed that I had not shared last night because he was a miser. I was tired of paying for my brother’s poor manners, tired of slipping girls he cheated a few silvers dollars out of my own pocket, for services I had not solicited myself. He pursued his dalliances with women with a determined joylessness that I could not square with the exuberance with which he approached so many other things in life: riding, or fighting, or drinking. As in so many other things, I could make sense of my brother’s whims on this matter only so far.

He spoke to the sky, as though it had reproached him. “These women don’t know how to please a man, is all. And I will not pay for bad service.”

 

\---

 

We learned that our bloody reputation preceded us in The Dalles and Astoria, but it moved slowly southward, and we were unknown in Salem. There, the brute-faced man in trapping furs just stared at us blankly when we said our names, and reached for his shotgun. We were compelled to shoot him dead. My brother was great in moments of tension, all sinew and steel, and he fired as calmly as if he were shooting cans off a fence.

When we were back in Oregon City, Charlie explained this outcome to the Commodore, and we were sent back the same way, further south. That is how I learned of the new direction our employment was to take. Killing was not new to me, and I did not lose sleep or suffer nerves or shaky hands from it, as I’d known some men to do. Still, in the cold light of day, with my mind cool and unaroused, the cold-bloodedness of the thing seemed regrettable to me.

“This is a sign he has taken us into his confidence,” Charlie said, that night over drinks.

“Will he pay us more for more work?”

“He is a fair man.”

“Did he pay more for the last job?”

“The terms were already worked out. He cannot change them after the fact.”

“He cannot, can he? It is a shame he is bound by circumstance so.”

He just shook his head at me. “You do not understand business, Eli.”

I found the ride south unpleasant. The summer air was still and oppressive, and Charlie was sick from last night’s brandy and complained the whole way. I was too withdrawn into my own thoughts to answer him.

It weighed on me, knowing that we were going to do violence against a man who had never roused me to anger or done us any wrong. Killing to amend some slight, even if the first slight was usually Charlie’s, felt different. For far from the first time, I wished for Charlie’s cool in the face of violence, his ability to stride across the face of the earth without fear or doubt. I did not wish for his weakness for brandy.

We were seeking a prospector-turned-farmer who I was assured had done dark deeds. Charlie didn’t have the whole story either, but knew that whatever he had done had put the Commodore back years in his enterprise. This seemed dubious to me, looking around the man’s modest farm, but I was not inclined to worry myself about it. We came upon the man, Graves, near sundown on his farm, chopping wood. It was agreed that we should get close enough to identify the man with certainty before killing him. Presenting ourselves as weary travelers, which was not hard, we approached and asked for water. Graves looked at us long, but he put down the axe and drew us a bucket of water from the well. He was tall and gaunt-faced, and watched with a kind of wary forbearance as I drank deeply and poured a ladleful over my head.

I think I was genuinely regretful when my brother cocked his gun beside the man’s temple.  

“We are the Sisters Brothers,” Charlie said, an irrelevant introduction.

The man did not struggle or curse us; instead, he raised his eyes to the sky. “I should have known this would happen. I saw the omens.”

It was a strange enough thing to say that Charlie and I looked at each other.

“What omens?” I asked.

The man shook his head, gazing hard at a rough-hewn structure across the field that I took to be his house.

“I have never seen an omen myself,” I said, for lack of anything else to say, then considered. “Or perhaps I have and have not known it.”

Graves looked at me severely, then back at the house, as if I was of limited interest to him.

My brother sighed. “We are not here to have a conversation with the man,” and shot him. The man staggered back and raised his eyes to me; what he expected me to do I couldn’t imagine. I lifted my pistol and finished him off.

I turned on Charlie, irritated. “Was it really so urgent? I would have liked to have learned what he meant.”

“I do not think you had anything to learn from a man who died so pitifully.”

All the same, we avoided his house when looking for a place to stay the night, which seemed built at a slight angle that was discomfitting to look at too long. In the dusk, I could see some shadow disconnect itself from the roof and take to the air. It was probably only an owl, but the sight unsettled me, and left me on edge all the way back to town.

 

\---

 

The next group of men were easier. These were not men quietly making their way in the world. They had occupied the first floor of a saloon, the owners driven away, and were slowly drinking the place dry.

 Charlie had noticed that I had been subdued and withdrawn after our first kill. Perhaps that was why he began it like he would have begun a fight back at the Pig-King, with an insult. The largest of the men approached him, grabbed him by the collar, and shoved him up against a wall. It affected me to see that. My brother was in control of the scene—he had his gun in his pocket, and he fired through his pocket, shooting the man right in the belly, where he fell back with a moan, but the damage, for me, was done.

It little mattered that we had gone looking to kill them, just like it had never mattered that Charlie always started the fights he found himself in. The sight of a large man misusing his strength against my brother in physical combat affected me on a primal level, and drew a curtain of fury across my mind.

 The other men had risen in their partner’s defense, but I was faster. I shot them both, lacking the accuracy to kill, but true enough to send them both screaming to the floor. I took a moment to change pistols and aim carefully while they writhed across the floor, finishing one and then the other. Then I approached the twisting, bloodied man who had put his hands on my brother. Charlie had stood over him, his gun drawn, but he did not fire. I did not think then about why, about the fact that he so clearly wanted to see everything I would do for him. I simply strode across the room, and stepped on the man’s hand, drawing fresh screams, and caved his head in with the butt of my empty pistol.

I looked up at Charlie, my breath slowing and the haze of blood buzzing in my brain slowly retreating.

He leaned up against the wall, and surveyed me with a faint smile on his lips. I staggered to my feet, self-consciously wiping the blood on my hands on my dark trousers.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position on the bar, then jumped over onto the other side. “Given the service we’ve done this business, I think we’re owed a drink.”

 I disliked this part of coming down from my mood, when I still felt the rage, but no longer had anywhere to direct it, and was once again capable of shame. I felt a desire for restored control over my emotions, but I could not will myself towards calm. It bothered me—in some vague and ill-defined way—that my brother had made me do most of the fighting, and was standing there watching me shake with calm, amused eyes.

 “I am going out to the stables,” I announced, and walked out the door.

Inside, the stables smelled comfortingly of horses and cedarwood. In the private darkness, I sat on a groom’s stool, waiting for the shaking to stop. Idly, my hand went to the buttons of my trousers, and I exposed my organ to the night air. I needed to regain my composure.

My blood pounded aimlessly in my head as I took hold of myself. I sat, staring ahead, feeling no great relief from the touch.

I went through the motions of the soothing method my mother had taught me, thinking, as usual, of nothing in particular. Satisfaction eluded me. I cast my mind about, drawing up memories of the few times I’d been with a woman. But my thoughts were still too bloody, my anger too sharp—the memories of soft lips and perfumed skin I conjured made a poor mix with the violent urgency coursing through me.

I blamed Charlie. I thought of him drinking himself to a stupor behind the bar, the two top buttons on that much-abused shirt of his popped off where the bully had grabbed him, and the muscles in my jaw tightened. It made me think of the man’s fist around his collar, of Charlie backed against a wall, outsized in a fight but eyes calm and hungry for blood. That caused a twitch of my member in my hand, and I felt a moment’s flush of shame, which only served to stir my organ fully to life. My hand kept working, my breath coming quicker.

It was not the first time my thoughts had strayed in this direction. But usually it was always Charlie and a woman. I told myself it meant nothing: between us, it was always Charlie that women’s eyes were drawn to, and I sometimes wished his looks and confidence were my own. That was all. That was not what I was thinking of this time.

The hot, prickly, too-tight feeling that originated in my stomach began to transform into something more pleasurable. I thought, very clearly, that I would hate myself for this when I was done. But just as the madness for blood descended upon me, I could not stop now that I had started down this path.

I thought of Charlie shoved against the wall by stronger arms. Pinned there by me, his shirt ripped and that louche, inviting grin, daring me to do more, to touch him. Mocking my cowardice and slipping a hand between us, discovering how he excited me. Lazily taking me in hand, eyes ironic and amused as he watched my expression change—

I came with an undignified whimper, and the world returned to me. I dropped my hand to my side, mortified. My head had cleared and the thirst for violence had subsided like floodwaters after the rain has past, leaving me to survey the extent of the damage. _Is there no end to the things I find I am capable of when my temper is up?_ I thought. I kept my eyes closed longer, not ready to face the world. But I was overcome with a sudden fear that my brother might find me, still with my pants open in full view of the horses. That he would also somehow intuit the thoughts that had brought me to this state.

I opened my eyes, but of course, there was nobody in the stable with me. I staggered into the street and walked past rows of buildings in a circle, trying hard not to think about what I had thought about in the stable. I must have walked for hours, and I was grateful I did not meet anyone on the streets. Finally, I returned to the saloon to rejoin him.

As I walked back to the hotel, I noticed an owl sitting on the roof of our hotel. As I stared at it, it turned and blinked at me, before taking to the air.

In the saloon, Charlie lay across the bar. I thought I would cross the saloon quietly and avoid him, but he raised his head.

“Brother. You have arrived just in time. I intend to summit the stairs.”

He rose, and his legs promptly gave out beneath him. I sighed, and went to him. He got his arm across my shoulders, and I helped him up, feeling the ribs under his shirt shifting against my side. He leaned into me, and his head fell on my shoulder. This sudden closeness after thinking about him affected me, and I tensed, guilty. Charlie’s eyes flickered over my face, suspicious at once. I avoided his eyes.

Instead, he he gestured grandly to the bodies scattering the floor. “Brother, do you think that they saw omens of their death too?”

 “They seem like the type to miss it until it is upon them.”

“Not a thing likely to ever happen to my brooding brother.” His voice was mocking but not quite cruel. “I don’t doubt you sit and contemplate our deaths constantly.” 

“One of us must.”

He looking at me again, his eyes searching, clearly saying,  _something has changed, and I would like to know what._

I looked away, mortified that I was so easy to read. He would despise me if he knew, I thought. I did not like to think of the words he would use to cut me if he knew. I got him into the closest room, dropped him on the bed, and turned to go to bed.

“Stay, brother,” he said, smiling at me. His eyes were careless and arrogant, and full of that mocking indulgence, as if he knew a secret he might share, if I was good. It was the way he usually looked, when I knew something that he did not.

"Sit down," he said, patting the edge of the mattress.

I was suddenly overcome with the certainty that if I turned away, he would know everything. Unable to shake that feeling and leave, I sank to sit on the side of the bed. My brother had always been lean, possessed of a fluidity and grace that made me feel clumsy around him. It reminded me, uncomfortably, of how I feel when I am about to make love, all too aware of my body and the space it takes up.

He turned his face to me, and he studied me.

“While you were gone, I was thinking about our father.”

This surprised me, because my brother so rarely spoke of our father. “Why would you think of him?”

Now that he was in bed, my brother seemed alert, not so drunk as he’d seemed falling off the saloon bar. “He was a failed farmer. I think he thought he still had time to reinvent himself when he died. I don’t think he saw death coming for him until it happened.” He jerked his head in the vague direction of the stairs. “Like them, below us.”

My brother was not given to philosophical moods, so I waited to see what this was about.

“So you see,” he continued, as if he were picking up a thread of conversation we had just dropped, “It does not matter if the Commodore is a real commodore or not. Either way, he has succeeded. He has made himself into what he wants to be, in the time he has, and that is what matters.”

“I don’t see the point in that story,” I admitted.

“We are inventing ourselves into what we want to be, in the time we have. That is the point.”

This was not who I wanted to be right now, much less forever, but somehow, it seemed enough that Charlie thought we were in this together. I forgot everything else for a moment.

We had not shared a bed in some time. Not, in fact, since we were teenagers. Even then, I had felt ungainly beside him, in our too-small bed, aware that I took up the lion’s share of the mattress and trying desperately not to. Some nights, he’d kick me and try to shove me out of bed, as I suppose all brothers who share a bed do. There had been other times, usually when it was cold out, when he wrapped himself around me. It was the only time I had ever known him to be anything like physically affectionate, and I had always slept in those moments in a mix of pleasure and anxiety, as if any sudden movement would ruin the moment. My feelings toward my brother were complex, a confused tumble of longings and resentments that I carry on the insides on my skin. I often suppose that if I had never been bound by blood to my brother, I would have been the happier for it. I might have been a peaceful man, or close enough. Perhaps I only tell myself that, though.

“Stay a while with me, brother,” he said. I lowered myself back on my elbows on the bed, until there we were, lying side by side in bed.

“This has been a good venture, hasn’t it?” he said.

I nodded. I knew he could hear my head move on the pillow, and just then I did not trust my own voice.

“I told you it would be. You should trust me more.”

I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat, and said as lightly as I could, “You always get your way whether I trust you or not.”

A smile curled his lips, and he exhaled a short breath. A snort of laughter, or agreement.

His hand strayed over to my thigh. I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. He made no attempt to move it, and I did not either. I don’t know how much time passed. I felt only the impression of surprise, its outline where it should have been, but in truth was not.

I thought again about the fight he had picked with the big man downstairs. The clinical way he had stood back, holding his gun on the man as he died but not finishing him, because he wanted to see what I would do. How far I would go for him. The small smile on his lips when I had gotten up off the floor with bloody hands. I had no doubt, suddenly, about how far I would go, if he asked. I kept thinking that this should have sent me into another rage, but I only felt that same pull of blood towards blood; that thread that existed between Charlie and me.

I decided I would meet his challenge. I did not want to remain quivering and helpless before my brother forever. I shifted my thigh under his palm, lifted it into his touch. I looked over at him. Whatever secrets I was holding, I had the sense I had just given them up.

The expression on his face was intrigued, as if he'd just discovered an unexpected path while we were tracking through the forest. He took his hand away.

“We should share a bed more often, brother,” he said lightly. “I have missed you.”

We stared each other down, not yet willing to make a further move, or to back down. But I felt a kind of certainty, that things had shifted, and would not shift back. If he touched me again, I knew I would touch him back, and I felt certain it would come to that, now that Charlie knew he held this power over me too.

I rolled over in bed, and tried to sleep. I had already seen the signs.


End file.
